One product, one panel, one record.
Legion Biome Probiotic — label audit
Legion's own page states "The clinically effective dose of PreticX xylooligosaccharide is 1,000 milligrams" — and the two human trials Legion cites for it used 1.4 g and 2 g/day, with the authors of one concluding that 2.8 g may be more effective than 1.4 g. The label callout beside it claims XOS "improves body composition and blood glucose"; the trial Legion cites reports no effect on either.
This page is an audit of a label. It records what this product’s panel discloses, what of that could be checked against a primary record, and what could not. The score below ranks this product on that disclosure and on nothing else.
The record this page rests on
- NIH label record
- No NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record is on file for this product in this teardown.
- Label read on
- The most recent dated artefact behind this page. Labels change; this is how old our reading of it is.
- Cohort
- D₂₇ founding teardown One of the 27 products taken apart at label level. That cohort is frozen and dated, so the audit’s published percentages cannot silently move.
- How deep this went
- Full forensic teardown Panel transcribed, every strain designator queried, every certification chased to its issuer’s own register, and the literature behind each marketing claim opened and read.
The Label Verifiability Score for this product
85.3 out of 100
Rank 27 of the 154 products in this audit the rubric can score. This rank is shared with 1 other product — 2 products sit on 85.3 and are tied. They hold the position jointly; no tiebreaker is applied, because every tiebreaker available here would be a number the rubric deliberately refused to weigh, smuggled back in to make a list look tidier.
The score measures one thing: how much of what you are buying this company tells you, and how much of that survives being checked against a source that is not the company. It does not measure whether the product works — this site holds no efficacy data of its own, and 0 of 294 organism slots in the founding cohort carry a strain with a human randomised trial for any male-specific outcome, so nobody in this category has evidence that would support a ranking by effect.
Computed over the whole rubric: this record answers all five questions below, so nothing is renormalised away and the divisor is the full 1.00. That share travels with every score on this site and is never dropped — a score over part of the rubric’s weight and the same score over all of it are different claims.
| Component | Weight | What was counted, and where | Fraction | Weight × fraction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strain identity printed on the panel | 0.24 | 3 of 3 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 3 / 3 = 1.0000 | 0.2400 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 3 of 3 organism slots have an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 3 / 3 = 1.0000 | 0.2000 |
| What the CFU count is measured against | 0.22 | Potency basis "none-stated": CFU figure printed yes, single basis stated no, basis reaches expiry no — 1 of 3. | 1 / 3 = 0.3333 | 0.073333 |
| Printed designators that lead to a human trial | 0.20 | 3 of 3 checked organism slots resolve to at least one human randomised trial under the designator exactly as printed. This counts whether the identity leads to a trial, never what the trial found. | 3 / 3 = 1.0000 | 0.2000 |
| Certification confirmed at the issuer’s own register | 0.14 | 1 claimed certification found on the issuer’s own public register. Read the scope before reading the mark: most certify one narrow property. | 1 / 1 = 1.0000 | 0.1400 |
0.853333 — the last column added up — divided by 1.00, the weight this record could answer, is 0.8533. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 85.3 above.
See this product’s row in the full ranking, alongside the other 153 scored products, or read what each of the five components asks and how to check it .
What this label discloses
Everything in this table is what the product itself states — on the printed panel, on the brand’s own page, or in the label record the manufacturer filed. Nothing in it is checked yet; checking is the next section.
| Disclosure | As recorded |
|---|---|
| CFU as printed | 25 billion CFU per 2-capsule serving (10 B420 + 10 LP299v + 5 DE111) |
| What that count is measured against | No basis stated |
| Strain designators | All organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 3 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
The panel prints per-strain CFU with no basis qualifier — no "at manufacture", no "through expiry". The FAQ says only: "Does Biome require refrigeration? It's not essential, but Biome will remain potent longer if you store it in a cool, dark place.""
The panel’s own words on potency, verbatim.
A CFU number appears with no temporal basis of any kind. A count with no basis is not a quantity; there is no date at which it is claimed to be true.
Every organism on the panel carries a printed strain designator. Whether those designators lead anywhere is a separate question, answered below.
| Organism as printed | Designator as printed | Quantity as printed | What the designator resolves to | The query we ran |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bifidobacterium lactis (correct name: Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis) | B420 | 75 mg (10 billion CFU) | Human RCT | "Bifidobacterium animalis" AND B420 AND randomized |
| Lactobacillus plantarum 299v (correct name: Lactiplantibacillus plantarum) | LP299V / DSM 9843 | 60 mg (10 billion CFU) | Human RCT | "Lactobacillus plantarum" AND 299v AND randomized |
| Bacillus subtilis | DE111 | 57.5 mg (5 billion CFU) | Human RCT | "Bacillus subtilis" AND DE111 AND randomized |
What of that is verifiable
A disclosure is verifiable when a reader can open a record that neither we nor the brand controls and see the same thing. Below is every dated artefact this page rests on. What is absent from this list is not verified, however reasonable it sounds.
- Photograph of the printed panel — Image-2-Carousel-Suppl-Facts-Biomehttps://legionathletics.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Image-2-Carousel-Suppl-Facts-Biome.png — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured The brand's own Supplement Facts PNG, read directly: per-strain designators, per-strain milligrams and per-strain CFU, with supplier trademarks footnoted. Not in DSLD — the brand's own image is the only source. The graphic callouts criticised above exist only in this image.
- Dated capture of the brand’s own page — legion-biome-pdp-2026-07-30https://legionathletics.com/products/supplements/biome-probiotic/ — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured Live page: $49.99, InStock, the comparison table with the empty price cell, the three "clinically effective dose" sentences, and the reference list.
- Photograph of the printed panel — Biome-COA-Morgan-Walshhttps://legionathletics.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Biome-COA-Morgan-Walsh.png — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured Lot-specific certificate of analysis: lot 411-0676, manufactured 11/2024, expires 11/2026, per-strain CFU assayed 10-Dec-2024, heavy metals and microbials. Names no issuing laboratory.
How many of its strains have a human trial for what it is sold for
Across the frozen founding cohort, 0 of 294 organism slots (0.0%) carry an organism with a human randomised controlled trial for any male-specific outcome. Not for this product — for all 27 of the founding teardowns, taken together. That is the number to hold against any men’s probiotic, including this one.
Two further founding-cohort figures for context: only 43 of 294 organism slots carry a strain with any human RCT at all under the exact code printed on the label, and only 2 of 27 products have a published human trial of the finished formula — the thing actually in the bottle. All three figures divide by the frozen cohort of 27 teardowns and 294 organism slots, never by every teardown on this site.
For this product specifically, 3 organism slots carry a strain with a human RCT under the exact designator printed on the label.
A word on what a designator has to clear before it counts here. The organism must be named with the exact strain code that appears in the trial, the trial must be in humans, and the code must return that trial when a reader searches it. A species name does not qualify: the trials in this field are of strains, and a species contains thousands of them.
What it costs per day
$1.67 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $49.99 USD
- What that buys
- 60-capsule bottle (30 servings, 2 capsules per serving)
- Price checked
- — the source we read it fromhttps://legionathletics.com/products/supplements/biome-probiotic/ — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
What certification it holds, checked at the issuer’s own register
A badge on a bottle is a claim like any other. Every row below was checked — or not checked — at the certifier’s own public register, never at the badge. Across the frozen founding cohort, 2 of 27 products hold a certification we could confirm at the issuer — a founding-cohort figure, not a count over every teardown on this site.
| Programme | Status at the issuer | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| Labdoor | Confirmed at issuer | 30 July 2026 |
| NSF-certified facility | Brand-asserted, unverified | 30 July 2026 |
| "Accredited third-party laboratories" | Brand-asserted, unverified | 30 July 2026 |
Labdoor
Found on the certifier’s own public register.
The only certification claim in its batch that could be checked against a certifier's live database, and it checks out: Labdoor score 100.0 of 100, lot 0385A6, tested 14 July 2026, probiotic found 49.1 billion CFU against a claimed 25 billion, and yeast, mould, coliforms, E. coli, S. aureus, Salmonella and Shigella all at 0 cfu/g. Two things Legion's marketing does not mention, both read off Labdoor's own pages: Labdoor's probiotics category contains exactly one product — this one — so any "#1 ranked by Labdoor" framing is #1 of 1; and Labdoor sells the products it ranks (Amazon Associates disclosure plus a "BUY FROM THESE SELLERS" block) and sells certification as a B2B service to brands. That does not make the assay results false. It does mean "independently certified" carries less weight than it reads.
NSF-certified facility
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
Legion states its products are "made in America… in NSF-certified, FDA-inspected facilities". No facility name and no NSF registration number is published, so there is nothing to look up.
"Accredited third-party laboratories"
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
Legion publishes a lot-specific certificate of analysis, which is more than almost any brand in this set. But the document offered as proof carries no issuing laboratory name, no accreditation number, no analyst signature and no letterhead — only method codes and internal reference numbers. The marketing claim names accredited third-party laboratories; the certificate names none.
How it differs from the same brand’s women’s version
Across the fourteen same-brand men’s-versus-women’s label diffs run inside the frozen founding cohort, zero men’s or default formulas contain a probiotic strain, identified by designator, that was selected on male-specific evidence. In eight of the fourteen the sex-specific differentiator is a botanical or a mineral, and in five of the fourteen the women’s SKU is better-specified, cheaper, or both — “better-specified” meaning the panel that discloses more, never the panel with more in it. The rule behind each of those counts, and all fourteen pairs classified against it , are published in full. Diffs run on teardowns added since sit outside this fourteen, and outside the sentence above.
This brand sells no women’s counterpart to this product, so there is no diff to run.
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 preticx-clinically-effective-dose-below-both-cited-trials
Legion states, verbatim: "The clinically effective dose of PreticX xylooligosaccharide is 1,000 milligrams." Legion cites exactly two human XOS trials. Finegold 2014 tested 1.4 g and 2.8 g/day and concluded "2.8 g per day may be more effective than 1.4 g per day". Yang 2015 tested 2 g/day. One thousand milligrams is below the lowest dose in either, and 36% of the dose Finegold's authors identified as more effective. This is the strongest single finding against the product because it is fully self-contained: Legion's claim, Legion's citation, and the citation's own stated result, all in one place.
The record: PMID 24513849 · PMID 26300782 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 2 xos-body-composition-callout-contradicted-by-legions-own-citation
The Supplement Facts graphic callout claims PreticX "improves body composition and blood glucose". Yang 2015 — Legion's own citation — reports verbatim: "In Pre-DM, XOS showed a tendency to reduce OGTT 2-h insulin levels (P = 0.13), but had no effect on body composition, HOMA-IR, serum glucose, triglyceride, satiety hormones, and TNFα." The overreach is in the label graphic; Legion's body copy on the same page is narrower and defensible.
The record: PMID 26300782 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 3 b420-body-fat-claim-rests-on-a-failed-primary-endpoint
Legion calls B420 "one of the most researched probiotic strains for reducing body fat and supporting a leaner body composition". The pivotal trial Legion cites twice reports, verbatim: "There were no significant differences between groups in body fat mass in the ITT population." The headline result is per-protocol, from 134 of 225 randomised subjects, and it belongs to the B420-plus-polydextrose arm (−4.5%, P = 0.02, N = 37). B420 alone was −3.0%, P = 0.28. Overall ANOVA P = 0.095. The dose matches; the co-ingredient does not — the arm that worked used 12 g/day of polydextrose and Biome contains 1 g/day of xylooligosaccharide.
The record: PMID 27810310 · NCT01978691 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 4 boosts-workout-recovery-contradicted-by-both-athlete-trials
The DE111 label callout claims it "increases immune cell production and boosts workout recovery". The female trial states verbatim that probiotic consumption "had no effect on physical performance but may improve body composition in female Division I soccer and volleyball players". The male trial states verbatim that supplementation "had no effect on body composition, performance, hormonal status, or gut permeability". Neither found a performance effect.
The record: PMID 33105368 · PMID 30049931 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 5 the-one-male-only-de111-trial-was-null
Twenty-five male Division I baseball athletes, twelve weeks, double-blind placebo-controlled, DE111 at one billion CFU/day — one fifth of Legion's dose. Null across body composition, performance, hormones and gut permeability. The single positive (TNF-α, P = 0.024) is one hit among about seven biochemical markers with no multiplicity adjustment reported. The body-composition benefit Legion's marketing leans on comes from a 23-woman trial. This is the most on-topic finding in the whole product corpus for a men's-probiotic question.
The record: PMID 30049931 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 6 cfu-basis-unstated
Per-strain CFU is printed with no temporal qualifier. The certificate of analysis proves potency at about one month post-manufacture, 23 months before expiry. No through-expiry guarantee appears on the label, the page or the certificate.
The record: Legion-hosted certificate of analysis, lot 411-0676
Finding 7 coa-names-no-laboratory-while-marketing-claims-accredited-labs
The published certificate carries no issuing laboratory name, no accreditation number, no analyst signature and no letterhead — only method codes and internal reference numbers — while Legion's marketing says it "tests all products for purity and potency in accredited third-party laboratories".
The record: Legion-hosted certificate of analysis, lot 411-0676
Finding 8 potency-varies-four-and-a-half-fold-across-lots
Three CFU measurements of the same product: the manufacturer certificate found 34 billion against a 25 billion claim (lot 411-0676, December 2024); the Labdoor report Legion hosts found 154 billion (lot 0456E4, February 2025); Labdoor's live database found 49.1 billion (lot 0385A6, July 2026). All three are above label, which is the most important fact — nothing is under-dosed. But a 4.5-fold spread tells you how loosely CFU enumeration in a multi-strain product is controlled, and a 616% result does not mean more probiotic for your money: it means the assay and the label are measuring different things.
The record: Legion certificate of analysis lot 411-0676 · Labdoor lots 0456E4 and 0385A6 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 9 legions-own-comparison-table-omits-legions-price
Legion publishes a comparison table with a "Price Per Serving" row listing Transparent Labs $1.53, Garden of Life $1.43 and NOW Foods $1.50. Legion's own cell in that row is empty. Legion's actual price per serving is $1.67 — higher than all three competitors it chose to list. It is the only row in the table where Legion's cell is blank, and the only metric on which Legion loses.
The record: legionathletics.com comparison table markup, extracted 2026-07-30 — open ithttps://legionathletics.com/products/supplements/biome-probiotic/ — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 10 citation-eight-is-a-supplement-companys-content-page
Legion's supporting citation for B420 reducing "toxic compounds… that can cause inflammation throughout the body" is, verbatim: "Science Review: Bifidobacterium lactis 420 Metagenics Institute. Accessed October 16, 2022." That is a supplement company's content page, not a study.
The record: legionathletics.com reference list, verified live 2026-07-30
What we could not verify
Every gap below is published rather than deleted. Most are derived automatically from the empty fields in this page’s own record, so a gap cannot be hidden by leaving a box blank.
- NSF-certified facility status
- Legion states its products are "made in America… in NSF-certified, FDA-inspected facilities". No facility name and no NSF registration number is published, so there is nothing to look up.
- "Accredited third-party laboratories" status
- Legion publishes a lot-specific certificate of analysis, which is more than almost any brand in this set. But the document offered as proof carries no issuing laboratory name, no accreditation number, no analyst signature and no letterhead — only method codes and internal reference numbers. The marketing claim names accredited third-party laboratories; the certificate names none.
- The CFU basis
- Never stated. The published certificate of analysis settles the timing empirically — the CFU assay was run on 10 December 2024, about one month after the 11/2024 manufacture date and 23 months before the 11/2026 expiry, at 34 billion CFU total against a 25 billion label claim, a 36% overage. That strongly implies Legion formulates to hold 25 billion through expiry. But Legion never says so, there is no through-expiry guarantee anywhere, and a buyer holding a bottle twenty months post-manufacture has no stated assurance and no published stability data.
- The issuing laboratory behind the certificate of analysis
- Not named on the document, which also carries no accreditation number, signature or letterhead.
- The exact subscription discount rate for this SKU
- Advertised on-page as "Save up to 30%"; the rate for this product was not confirmed.
- Legion's "over 60" and "over 30" peer-reviewed study counts for B420 and DE111
- PubMed indexes 15 and 12 on the corresponding queries. Supplier dossiers legitimately count conference abstracts, in-vitro work and unpublished reports, so these are overstated rather than fabricated — but as printed next to the words "peer-reviewed" on a consumer page they are not reproducible from the public literature.
How to check every line of this page yourself
Nothing on this page requires trusting us. Every claim above resolves to a record you can open:
- Open the NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record linked at the top of this page. It is the label the manufacturer filed, not our transcription of it.
- Compare the CFU line and the suggested-use line against the disclosure table above. If they disagree with us, we are wrong and we want to know.
- Take any strain designator from the panel and run the query printed beside it. The query is published precisely so you can get a different answer than we did.
- Divide the price by the number of days the label’s own dose instructions make the container last. That arithmetic is the whole of the cost-per-day row.
- Search the certifier’s own register for this product, not for the brand. A company can participate in a programme without this product being on its list.
Start with what Legion does right, because it is the reason everything below could be checked at all.
The panel gives three organisms, each with a real trademarked designator, each with its own milligram amount and its own CFU count: B. lactis B420 at 75 mg / 10 billion, L. plantarum 299v at 60 mg / 10 billion, B. subtilis DE111 at 57.5 mg / 5 billion. No proprietary blend. Supplier attributions footnoted. A lot-specific certificate of analysis published with heavy metals and microbials. A third-party certification that survives independent verification at the certifier’s own database.
That disclosure is what makes Legion falsifiable — and it is why the failures below were findable here and are simply untestable on the two products it shares a batch with.
The PreticX claim. Legion writes: “The clinically effective dose of PreticX® xylooligosaccharide is 1,000 milligrams.” It cites two human XOS trials. Finegold 2014 tested 1.4 g and 2.8 g/day and concluded that “2.8 g per day may be more effective than 1.4 g per day.” Yang 2015 tested 2 g/day. One thousand milligrams is below the lowest dose in either paper Legion supplies. And the label callout claiming XOS “improves body composition and blood glucose” is contradicted by Yang’s own sentence: no effect on body composition, no effect on serum glucose.
The B420 claim. The dose is right — 10 billion CFU/day, matching the pivotal trial. The arm that worked is not this product: it required B420 plus 12 g/day of polydextrose, and Biome carries 1 g/day of a different fibre. The B420-alone arm was null. And the trial’s pre-specified primary endpoint failed outright in the intent-to-treat population.
The DE111 claim. The 5-billion-CFU dose is sourced to a trial in 23 women. The only male-only trial of DE111 used one billion CFU/day and found nothing — no effect on body composition, performance, hormones or gut permeability. For a men’s-probiotic question, that is the most on-topic result in this entire research project, and Legion cites the paper accurately in its own reference list. It does not hide the null. What it does is print “boosts workout recovery” on the label graphic, which neither athlete trial supports.
One last thing, because it is small and revealing. Legion publishes a comparison table with a “Price Per Serving” row: Transparent Labs $1.53, Garden of Life $1.43, NOW Foods $1.50. Legion’s own cell is empty. Legion is $1.67.